Monday, March 31 Commentary

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has made it very clear to PC leader Tim Hudak and his party that "if steps are not taken immediately" she will have no choice but to take "all encessary and appropriate steps" to ensure Hudak's false comments are corrected. She is not explicit but there's no doubt she means suing him for defamation.

Wynne is referring to the PC leader's allegation of last week that she personally oversaw the destruction of documents in the gas plant scandal and the alleged coverup.

Hudak sent out his energy critic Lisa McLeod to respond via conference call with reporters

At no point during the conference call did McLeod repeat the words Wynne calls defamatory.

There are political risks here for both leaders. If Hudak backs away he looks weak. If he doesn't back away and Wynne doesn't take him to court, she looks weak.

"We've renewed our call for a public inquiry into what exactly happened," Horwath says.

A public inquiry now would get in the way of the OPP criminal investigation so don't expect anything on that for some time, if ever.

SOUDAS

There's disagreement over whether he quit or was fired but a long-time confidante of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Dimitri Soudas is gone from his post as executive director of the Conservative Party of Canada...barely 4 months on the job.

Sources say there was extreme unhappiness at the highest levels about the way Soudas was using his influence so his fiance, MP Eve Adams could win the nomination race for the new riding of Oakville North-Burlington. Adams is currently the MP for Mississauga-Brampton South.

The story goes that she tried to get into a closed-door meeting of the new riding association. The association refused to let her in. Her fiance, Dimitri Soudas arrived and picked her up and not long after, a regional organizer for the party was fired after complaining about the way Eve Adams was behaving.

All this, of course flys in the face of the Conservative Party claim to run open nominations. It's the same type of political nonsense Justin Trudeau has been spewing about open Liberal nomiantion meetings when he directly intervened to block a nomination in one of the Toronto ridings recently.

BOUCHER

It will take an autopsy to confirm it but there's little doubt that the body recoverd from the water near Thickson Road and Crystal Beach Boulevard in Whitby Saturday is that of high school teacher Jeffrey Boucher.

His wife, Kirsten knows its him because of the wedding ring found on his hand which has her name inscribed on the inside.

The autopsy will be perfromed today and police hope it will give them the cause of death.

COURTHOUSE

The woman credited with helping save the life of a Peel Regional police constable says the adrenaline kicked in so despite the fact she is on a disability pension and suffers from severe back and knee problems she was able to apply pressure to the wound of Constable Mike Klarenbeek. He was gut-shot inside the Brampton courthouse Friday by a 46-year old man from Brampton but so far no one knows why this man was even at the courthouse. He died there.

Constable Klarenbeek is improving in hospital. He seemed to think the woman who helped him was a nurse and his wife sent out a public thank you on the weekend. NewsTalk 1010 host and Sun columnist Joe Warmington has found this woman and she's not a nurse. 54-year old Linda Hunt took a first-aid course nearly 30 years ago but beyond that she has no medical training. She was at the courthouse to appear on a charge of possession of marijuana.

GM

It's a fairly regular occurance. One car company or another launching recalls because of defective of faulty parts.

But in the latest recalls of General Motors, the evidence is mounting the company has known for years that they had bad ignitiion switches in Cobalts, the Solistice, G-5, Ion, and Sky. The recall now totals 2.6-million vehicles.

Congressional investigators are now leaking information which shows a disturbing pattern of behaviour by GM.

To start, the company that made the ignition switches Delphi Automotive has told the investigators GM approved those ignition switches even though the parts did not appear to meet GM's own specifications.

It was 2001 when GM first found problems with the switches...but it took until this year to recall them.

It's also been learned in Washington that in '05, GM engineers met to discuss making changes to the switch because it was "very fragile". A few months later the chief of engineering for Cobalt closed the case saying the fix would take too long and cost too much.

A few months later, the brand quality division asked for a new investigation because of the ongoing problems. Initially that was approved but was later canceled with no explantion.

There are at 13 people dead because of these faulty switches and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if some GM execs are charged criminally and some go to prison.

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